Comments on: Unraveling the Mystery of ‘Affordable’ Housinghttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/
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By: michelle williamshttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-889927
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 23:51:02 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-889927i totally agree with you i am a single, middle class woman who earns 50.000 a year. i am unable to afford a one bedroom apt for 1200-1500 a month i was so desperate i was willing to move to new jersey or upstate so i could live a decent life. i can’t believe how expensive this city has become. its almost like they want the middle class to leave.
]]>By: Borishttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-599045
Sun, 17 Jan 2010 05:16:59 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-599045One topic that’s usually forgotten in the conversation about affordable housing is land use. Vast swaths of NYC are single family homes, and zoning laws make it pretty much impossible to upgrade these areas to townhouses or 3-6 floor buildings with small, quiet streets and neighborhood parks. Those are the kinds of areas (with good transit as well) that are moderately priced and attractive to middle-class, tax-paying families.

Why don’t these neighborhoods get built? Because of the city and state government’s obsession with trying to be like the rest of America – the single family-home, car-based lifestyle, the “lower taxes” mantra – all of these things fuel the vicious cycle of cutting city services such as transit and park maintenance, which drives out middle class families, which leads to a smaller tax base, which causes service reductions yet again. Meanwhile, the politicians make more and more unfunded promises to unions and government workers. The taxpayers are further alienated, because their taxes are going increasingly towards gold-plated pensions, medical plans, and salaries of government workers and contractors, while city services get cut.

Such is the complicated picture within which the affordable housing debate plays out. Defining what is or isn’t affordable is meaningless without understanding the causes behind high housing prices or poor city services.

]]>By: Joan in Californiahttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-595933
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:56:56 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-595933Sounds like the Central Coast where every “affordable housing” project proposed for the past 20 years has never provided a single unit under $300K.

When the Army relocated to the state of Washington, in the mid 90’s some rental housing on what had been the army base opened up temporarilly at below market level. Local landlords protested so much that within a year the people who had taken advantage of the offer found themselves being taken advantage of.

Single rooms with amenities (heat and light and shared bath) are going for $800-900 a month around here.

Most working people earn well under $75K around here so $1500 a month is out of the question without having roommmates.

]]>By: anonymoushttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-595769
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:52:09 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-595769There is still no affordable housing for single people making under $ 75,000 a year with perfect credit, and a decent “resume”. Most of us cannot affort more than $ 1500/month for a one bedroom, and the Mayor and Governors basically gave the developers the keys to the city to create high-priced tiny apartments that no one could afford. This is still a cosmic joke on all of us.
]]>By: Russell Whttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-595667
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:01:33 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-595667WilliamUWS – Although you write that, “There is no dearth of available apartments in NYC,” the vacancy rate was only 2.9% in 2009. Supply and demand. If 97.1% of apartments are occupied, there is scarcity.

Please re-read the quote that you cited:
“Sky-high rents on uncontrolled apartments, because desperate renters have nowhere to go – the absence of new apartment construction, despite those high rents, because landlords fear that controls will be extended?”

How is this status quo a good thing?

Now lets look at who benefits from rent controls in New York City. Its not the working class. It is disproportionally educated Manhattanites.

As far as Boston goes, the article that you cite mentions why comparing Boston to NYC is problematic:
“There are some significant differences, of course. Boston’s vast student population distorts the market. New York’s rent-regulated universe of one million apartments dwarfs the Boston area’s former pool of roughly 45,000. New York’s system also relies heavily on variables that did not apply in Boston, like household income and monthly rent levels.”

Now, if you want to dig deeper, you’ll be hard pressed to find any study that supports rent controls with empirical data that establishes causality. Good luck with that one!

As soon as white people move into a neighborhood, landlords jack the prices up. I’m sorry, but that’s racial discrimination. White people have a right to live in housing that doesn’t cost more than 1/3 of their income, but in NYC, landlords don’t believe it. They believe white people should pay an arm and a leg to live somewhere. As soon as middle class white people get chased out of one area because the housing goes sky high and start moving into a lower rent area, the rents get raised.

People call this “gentrification” but I call it discrimination. You know people roll their eyes when white people start moving in. “There goes the neighborhood! The whites are here ‘gentrifying!’ Time to move out before the rents triple!”

]]>By: mary browninghttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-595465
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:10:49 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-595465I remember well when I was living in NYC that friends of mine lived in a three bedroom apartment on Madison and 96th with a huge livingroom that was rent controlled and they were putting through two sons at a private Manhattan school while maintaing a house on Fire Island.

Both parents were employed, wife parttime at a non-profit.

Things are just fine in Manhattan, if you know how to “milk the system”.

]]>By: Jennifer Foxhttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-595315
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 03:21:35 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-595315The only great mystery here is why, after about a half century of continuous affordable housing programming in New York, the media (and the NEW YORK TIMES, for heavens’ sake!) insists on treating affordable housing policy as an impenetrable, unfathomable quagmire. “Affordable ” has always been 30-33% of household income, and the income guidelines have always been HUD-published, and has always included a larger geographical area than hard-hit neighborhoods would like. This is especially true since the Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit came into being…but that was in 1986! Y’all have had plenty of time to figure this out. If one didn’t know better, one would surmise that the media is more interested in perpetuating the myth that it’s impossible to comprehend affordable housing, because that makes a better story than writing stories about how it actually works.

And see, it would be really interesting if folks on the city beat did make an attempt to understand how housing policy works, and take the next step to figure out how that might affect average citizens. Such a line of questioning might lead to interesting questions about the actual cost of developing and preserving affordable housing at the levels required to reach the most needy. Just as a “for instance”.

]]>By: Serendipitoushttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-595267
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:18:05 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-595267New York cannot simply base affordable housing on 30% of one’s income in a city where 1/3 of residents are poor, yet there is the largest concentration of millionaires and billionaires in the country. It leaves out far too many working middle class people who make too much to qualify for any type of assistance and positively contribute to the tax base but who don’t earn enough to compete in the real estate market.

In New York one bedroom apartments START at approximately $1500 in the outer boroughs and condos and co-ops in these same boroughs start at $250-$300k which necessitates having a downpayment of $50-60k and making mortgage payments in excess of $2500/mo (prices are roughly double in Manhattan.) To qualify under the 1/3 of income model, one has to make approximately $120k. And even though these units are just as unaffordable to single people making $60k-$100k as they are to families of 4 earning less than $39k, only the latter group receives any assistance while taking more in public benefits than they pay in taxes. To say nothing of the fact that people making $60-$100k are leaving the city in droves to other states where they can enjoy a reasonable quality of life on their earnings.

@ #2: New York is so smitten with low income housing that we offer it to undocumented immigrants, essentially importing poverty as though there were a surplus of tax-subsidized housing that needs to be filled. The reality is that the supply can’t keep up with the ever-increasing demand and social spending increases exponentially every year.

“Sky-high rents on uncontrolled apartments, because desperate renters have nowhere to go – the absence of new apartment construction, despite those high rents, because landlords fear that controls will be extended? ”

There is no dearth of available apartments in NYC – in the last few years there’s been a construction boom because for a while people were willing to pay whatever came their way while the overwhelming majority of NYC’s personnel support infrastructure – the clerks at the stores you shop, the $30,000 a year bank tellers, the bus drivers, street sweepers, Bartistas, all had to make due with hovels or remain living with their parents.

Further the article you quote speaks nothing of what occurred in Boston when it eliminated Rent Laws.

“more working-class families, faced with soaring rents, are moving two or three area codes beyond the 617 exchange, and that homelessness and overcrowding are cresting… According to Boston officials, the median advertised monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment is now about $1,600, up from $882 in 1995. In Cambridge, the comparable rent is roughly $1,700 now, up from $1,163 in 1996.”

Today’s market has a preponderance of available apartments – many of which have had “price reductions” yet you’ll be hard pressed to find ones that a family of four on a $50,000 income could afford unless you’re thinking they should all be living in a tiny studio. Hardly a healthy quality of life in 21st Century NYC. Look at the graphs that the lead article here supports and tell me otherwise.

]]>By: Russell Whttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-595019
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:43:51 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-595019If people really want more affordable housing, they would demand the elimination of Rent Control and Rent Stabilization. Even a left-of-center economist like Paul Krugman has articulated the damage that price controls inflict:http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-affair.html
]]>By: CEShttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-595005
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:03:24 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-595005Very interesting. I would also like to mention that a STUDIO is never an appropriate option for a family. So while a $900 studio may be affordable, the 2 bedroom which the family actually needs is $2500 and nowhere near affordable. Law dictates each person over age 4 has 80 sf of space not counting hallways or bathrooms. This law is broken over and over again. In my Inwood building nearly every 1 bedroom apartment has over 6 people living in it. The building is overcrowded and we all suffer.
]]>By: Captain Democracyhttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-594987
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:52:20 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-594987Those days are long gone when the last homestead land rush occurred in the 1880’s. What we need is universal house buying bill like the G.I. bill $1.00 down.http://www.CaptainDemocracy.wordpress.com
]]>By: kishahttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-594915
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:52:40 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-594915i think they still should not call them low income or affordable apartments. yes it is based on income, but before taxes and every oother tax that comes out of your pay. i think the guide lines need to be changed. low income apts range from $800 to whatever and that would be for a studio. how about the other things that a family needs food, clothes, heat/electric. with everything going up in prices, its hard to live and especially with kids. so again whats affordable? nothing…its a struggle everyday.
]]>By: WilliamUWShttp://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/comment-page-1/#comment-594901
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:39:20 +0000http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/affordable-housing/#comment-594901tonedeaf – What is your point other than envy or resentment?

Non-governmental apartments aren’t dolled out based on income. These that have them do so either out of being unable to afford to move or by luck. I’ve seen many elderly people living in walk-ups. I’m certain they would prefer to move could they afford to do so.

The myth about rent stabilization is that everyone is paying $500 a month for five bedroom apartments and have incomes in the millions.

I would gather very few, are fortunate to have higher than average incomes and a stabilized apartment.

The graph is to illustrate the average price of an apartment against income, not the distribution of said apartments across income – to which you might find that there are many households with multi-generational families living in less than adequate space. Their combined household incomes may be high, but individually they may not be able to afford housing.